Day: January 22, 2021

In my last post, I talked about the importance of organizing layers. The same is true for the elements that are within each layer. When I began to work in InDesign, I was confused about when to use placeholders and when to use text boxes. When utilizing text boxes, should I use a combination of text formats within one text box or separate each text font? I came up with the following answers.

Placeholders are used for:

       Raster or vector images
       Paths or closed shapes
       Background images or colors
       Anything that needs text wrap on it

Separate text boxes are used for:

       Captions
       Credit lines
       Header or Footer (usually on Master)

Combination text boxes are used for:

       Headlines with body copy, (especially for headlines which “span columns” of the body copy.) 

The following example is a text box that includes many different font sizes. The only additional placeholder boxes are the two images, which have text wraps.